Not Post-Literate Yet: Why reading hasn’t died, but it’s under pressure

# The argument in brief James Marriott's The New Dark Ages, as reviewed by Christoph Irmscher, warns that Western societies are drifting toward a condition Marriott calls "post-literacy." He means a drop in the cultural and cognitive habits that accompany serious reading and careful writing. The book traces how technical, social, and political changes have reduced reading's role and shows where that decline matters.

Marriott links several trends. Social media and smartphone platforms concentrate attention on short, visual, and performative content. Political figures who use spectacle and informal, often error-filled online messaging gain ground. The review points to the current U.S. president's social posts — misspellings, errant capitals, and viral imagery — as a public illustration of how written language can be degraded in civic life.

Concrete survey findings appear in the review: in 2025, 40 percent of Americans reported reading no books that year. Measured literacy levels have also slipped: many U.S. adults read at roughly a seventh- to eighth-grade level. Those numbers matter because constrained reading skills limit access to complex public argument and cultural works.

# Cultural history and the stakes Marriott's narrative situates the decline against a longer history. He recalls the slow rise of book culture: medieval manuscript production, the impact of the printing press, and the growth of mass literacy that produced major forms of literature and robust public debate. That achievement, he argues, was fragile. New technologies can widen access to information but also fragment attention and incentivize simplification.

# How new media reshapes habits The book examines platforms like TikTok as political and cultural tools. Marriott finds a correlation between TikTok use and increased vote share for populist and far-right movements in some contexts. He cites Nayib Bukele's TikTok-savvy autocracy as an example of how visual, short-form content can be harnessed for political spectacle. The review notes that podcasts and videos create alternatives to letter-writing and extended reading, shifting norms about how people tell stories and make arguments.

# Everyday evidence in classrooms and public life Marriott's concern is also pedagogical and practical. Irmscher reports a classroom anecdote: only one of 15 students had ever written a letter. That loss of ordinary literate practices, he suggests, makes it harder to teach older forms such as epistolary novels. The review uses those classroom details and public missteps to show how decreased practice and lower reading levels translate into concrete cultural gaps.

# What the review emphasizes Irmscher recognizes the irony that Marriott's book itself is a literate defense of reading. The review does not declare reading dead. Instead, it calls attention to measurable shifts — less reading, lower literacy levels, and widespread adoption of attention-fragmenting media — and frames them as risks for civic discourse and depth of understanding.

# Practical implication If the trends Marriott describes continue, institutions that depend on close reading — higher education, journalism, legal and policy work — will face greater challenges. The review implies that preserving reading habits requires cultural and educational responses that account for how digital platforms change attention and communication.